Event

THE ART OF THE STEAL

THE ART OF THE STEAL

Creativity An Eternal Mystery
Guest Speaker: To be announced (Friday, March 5 at 7:30pm)

Members $9 â Public $12 â No Refunds â Includes Reception

The Art of the Steal plays like a thrilling whodunit as it seeks to solve
what happened to the world-renowned Barnes art collection,
valued in the âbillions and billions.â The collection's unrivalled holdings of
post-impressionist and early modernist art are staggering in quantity:
181 paintings by Renoir, 69 by Czanne, 59 by Matisse and 46 by Picasso,
including many masterpieces. Dr. Albert Barnes was a self-made man
with a well-trained eye who assembled the art in the twenties. He
snubbed the provincial elites in his hometown of Philadelphia by
housing the collection in the suburb of Merion, Pennsylvania. Barnes
was more concerned with educating serious students than reaching
tourists, so he restricted attendance and refused to loan paintings to other
institutions. His individualism earned him antagonists (notably Walter
Annenberg, publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer) but also many
loyal supporters. Upon Barnes's death in 1951, his will gave control of the
collection to the trustees of Lincoln University, the first black university in the United States. Eventually, lawyers and businessmen
swarmed to exploit its resources. In the nineties, a sampling of the collection travelled the world. Then a scheme was hatched to
remove the collection from Merion that some would later call the heist of the century. (USA, 2009, 101 min., Dir.: Don Argott)